But what I could do is, to have Sigil and Word open next to each other.

surely that is the most efficient solution - even if you could highlight in sigil, sooner or later you will want to extract the highlights so why not copy/paste as you go, with 2 windows side by side?
HTML links should also copy over & work ok in word.

you can highlight very easily in some e-readers e.g. my Sony does it, but there's no way to then copy the annotations from the e-reader back onto a PC.

I think kindle is the only reader that makes that easy, but then you are into a different ebook format.

You could create a custom clip called "Yellow" with the following data:

Code:

Name: Yellow
Text: <span style="background-color:#FFFF66;">\1</span>

Then simply switch to code view, select Tools > Clips to open the Clips window select the Yellow entry and move the Clips window to the side.

Each time you find something you want to hightlight, click the Paste Clip button. This will apply a yellow background color style to the text that you selected, which is of course only visible in Book View mode.

yeep... thats how it will be I guess
But just to think, that it is in the hands of the developer to make 10.000 or 100.000 more users happy only to add two more buttoms, 1. hightlighting text 2. adding a note box to a certain word or sentence.... hmmmm, wouldn't it be worth?

If you are going to do it by hand be sure and put the style statement in a CSS file so they can be easily modified in one place should you decide later to change the color or make other modifications.

You could create a custom clip called "Yellow" with the following data:

Code:

Name: Yellow
Text: <span style="background-color:#FFFF66;">\1</span>

Then simply switch to code view, select Tools > Clips to open the Clips window select the Yellow entry and move the Clips window to the side.

Each time you find something you want to hightlight, click the Paste Clip button. This will apply a yellow background color style to the text that you selected, which is of course only visible in Book View mode.

Actually, to use a clip, just highlight the text then right click on it and you'll see the clips in the context menu. The next version will actually provide a dockable Clips window like the Table of Contents window to make this even easier.

Although I don't think this will help the OP much as they want to do this in Book View. All the talk of clips and styles is probably a bit further down the line. But if they really want to go that route they would do well to read through the user guide regarding styles, and then clips.

For the OP, one of the reasons that Sigil doesn't have a Book View button to change the foreground or background colour of the text is first because no one has asked for it. Mostly because most books are not in colour, and coloured text may not show up well on most of the greyscale readers. And not every action that someone wants can be made a button - there are just too many unique cases and most of Book View's buttons are just meant to be a basic way to style text. What everyone is pointing out is that you can create your own 'button'-like menu item (a "clip") that pastes the code necessary in Code View to make the text a certain colour. But as you said - that's in Code View and may be more than you want. Remember that Sigil is for creating ebooks as everyone has said, and its not really a reader with highlighting abilities.

@Frank's
You may want to consider using the free Kindle app, which has a nice yellow highlight feature. (You can convert your existing books with Calibre.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by meme

Actually, to use a clip, just highlight the text then right click on it and you'll see the clips in the context menu.

Yes, but only if the highlighted text is not flagged by the spell checker in which case only spelling suggestions are being displayed.
(Unlike previous versions, there doesn't seem to be an option to turn off the spell check in v6.)

IMHO, it would be helpful if one of the next minor versions would have the one of the following features:
- user defined shortcut keys and/or toolbar buttons for 1-5 custom styles/clips (E.g. S1, S2, S3, S4 and S5) that can be applied in Book View mode
- a user defined Small Caps style, e.g. <span class="sc">\1</span> with a dedicated toolbar button and a shortcut key

Quote:

Originally Posted by meme

For the OP, one of the reasons that Sigil doesn't have a Book View button to change the foreground or background colour of the text is first because no one has asked for it.

GUI options for changing background or foreground colors would be overkill, but a simple yellow highlight feature or some kind of custom bookmark might come in handy during the review of an OCR'd text to mark words or segments for further review.

one of the reasons that Sigil doesn't have a Book View button to change the foreground or background colour of the text is first because no one has asked for it. Mostly because most books are not in colour, and coloured text may not show up well on most of the greyscale readers.

A whole LOT of people will be getting an inexpensive tablet computer for Christmas. I think we're going to have to start taking colour content in our eBooks a lot more seriously next year.

surely that is the most efficient solution - even if you could highlight in sigil, sooner or later you will want to extract the highlights so why not copy/paste as you go, with 2 windows side by side?
HTML links should also copy over & work ok in word.

you can highlight very easily in some e-readers e.g. my Sony does it, but there's no way to then copy the annotations from the e-reader back onto a PC.

I think kindle is the only reader that makes that easy, but then you are into a different ebook format.

PS - it's CTRL + click to open a URL link in Word.

If the URL links would work when copy and paste from Sigil into word, I guess wouldn't have open this thread, because then are only the pictures are missing. But because you don't copy a whole epub book into word, the links are broken. But even if you would copy the whole book I doubt that the links would work anyway. I would be happy if I'm wrong here. I work with Win Word 2007, maybe a newer version can do it?

If the URL links would work when copy and paste from Sigil into word, I guess wouldn't have open this thread, because then are only the pictures are missing. But because you don't copy a whole epub book into word, the links are broken. But even if you would copy the whole book I doubt that the links would work anyway. I would be happy if I'm wrong here. I work with Win Word 2007, maybe a newer version can do it?

post an example - if I paste any hyperlink into a word document, then I can CRTL click it to go to that URL.
NB if word sees it as a link it will put it in blue underscore by default.

so I can copy from browser address bar , or type in www.whatever... and both will work in Word - it's been that way sine Word 2003 at least.

but just typing a url into sigil book view , or pasting in my browser address bar, will not work - they are both treated as text- a link has to be coded as such in sigil code view...

So are you talking about some other kind of links - like a link to a different section within the book ?

The next version will actually provide a dockable Clips window like the Table of Contents window to make this even easier.

.......But if they really want to go that route they would do well to read through the user guide regarding styles, and then clips.

Mostly because most books are not in colour, and coloured text may not show up well on most of the greyscale readers.....

Remember that Sigil is for creating ebooks as everyone has said, and its not really a reader with highlighting abilities.

Thanks a lot for your answer meme!!

I started this thread, because I study every week selected material from epubs and have still the need to print it out. I didn't find a better programm than Sigil for it. Calibre is nice (can't hightlight text neighter even it is a pure ebook reader), but Calibre doesn't copy the material in a right way into word like Sigil does for further refinement.

My vision:
We are pretty in the beginning of epub's reader and editor's. In only few years, I could imagen that even Word will be able to read and maybe to edit epubs without the need for any HTML code's.

Refering to ebook readers; they will be aplenty in color available soon too and in e-ink quality. My next investment for business and privat use will be a WIN Surface Pro with Windows 8 (available in January 2013). It's still the first of it's kind, but it will bring a significant change and shows where we are going in the future. I think plenty of business people want to make notes and highlight text wile reading a ebook and maybe also have later the need of printing some of it out...

Join Sigil & Calibre and make text highlighting possible and you're the best

Cybemole
For the most part, EPUB books are intended to run on standalone (not connected) devices so no help for URL links was included in these tools.
That may be changing .
But it does have support in Sigil 6

In Book View:
Use the (Insert Hyperlink) Links Icon: paste Your copied Browser bookmark into the 'Target' box: OK

I think plenty of business people want to make notes and highlight text wile reading a ebook and maybe also have later the need of printing some of it out...

like I said previously, that's all available now, within the Amazon Kindle infrastructure - see

http://www.ehow.co.uk/how_7393123_tr...kindle-pc.htmlThe Kindle allows you to add notes, also called annotations, to anything you read on the device. Whenever you save a note in your reading material, the Kindle stores it -- along with any highlights, bookmarks or clippings you create -- in a file named "My Clippings." Transfer this file to your PC and use a word processing program to quickly access all the notes you've made on your Kindle.

but Sony opted for a database design for their highlights ( = notes) feature, which stores only pointers to locations in the actual ebook files, so it is allegedly impossible to copy notes from sony e-reader to PC for further use.